While President Donald Trump was being sworn into office Friday, a team of hackers and data scientists were already working to preserve government information that could disappear within hours.

Four UCLA graduate students organized the data rescue event with the intent to archive environmental policy websites considered at-risk under the Trump administration. Britt Paris, a graduate student in the information studies department, said governmental pages on LGBTQ rights and climate change began to disappear following the Trump transition.

“Whenever a new administration comes in, official documents change,” Paris said. “We see it all the time from archival evidence.”

Paris said climate change data is particularly vulnerable, because studies on climate change require long-term data collection that allows researchers to visualize patterns over time. She said she and others were worried the transition to the Trump presidency would cause climate change research to lose governmental funding, thus creating gaps in the data record.

Paris said Friday’s event was organized in coordination with the DataRefuge initiative at the University of Pennsylvania, one of the main coordinators of data rescue events. She said hackers worked together to archive web-pages that climate change experts had previously listed as useful or most at-risk in the Trump era. The pages were shuttled into the Internet Archive, a computerized library that compiles digital information for storage.

Irene Pasquetto, a graduate student in information studies and a co-organizer of UCLA’s data rescue event, said Friday’s hackathon began with a panel of speakers from different universities who spoke on the importance of preserving climate change data. Later, some attendees discussed future research agendas for data preservation, while others got to work downloading at-risk websites.

Jennifer Pierre, a grad student in information studies, said one of the primary goals of the so-called hackathon was to preserve data that is accessible to the general public, since they would otherwise have to access it from difficult-to-read research papers.

“Governmental websites present information in a publicly understandable way,” Pierre said. “The public really has to step up and be willing to state their alliance with it, especially because each individual scientist can only tackle so much.”

She added that though the hackers felt pressure to salvage the information, the hackathon was first and foremost about pushing for the maintenance of a greater knowledge database for researchers and the public to take advantage of in the future.

“Leading up to the event, there was the idea that there was a time crunch,” Pierre said. “But, a lot of people came in with hopeful attitudes ready to get something done. And a lot of the participants on their way out said they felt they had accomplished something, felt like they had a vision about how to contribute.”

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The Undergraduate Students Association Council urged a Student Media newsmagazine member earlier this month to turn off its livestream during part of the the public comment period of its meeting. USAC's livestream policies do not allow for audio or video for a segment of its public comment periods, so as to protect the identity of students, but there are currently no regulations in place for Student Media livestreaming of council meetings. What do you think about this?
The student government should be able to restrict the public from recording its meetings, as it has the right to protect the identities of students who may face safety issues for what they say.
USAC meetings are a public forum and student journalists should be able to livestream to make this information accessible to the public.
The debate over livestreaming in USAC meetings is irrelevant, as few students watch livestreams of undergraduate student government meetings.
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GINA RODRIGUEZ ON UCLA CAMPUS DECEMBER 13TH
Gina Rodriguez and Ford Motor Company present a discussion on breaking the glass ceiling at the Northwest Auditorium at UCLA on December 13th.
Actress, director, activist
Gina Rodriguez along with Sheryl Connelly, Futurist at Ford Motor Company, Gillian Zucker,
President of Business Operations at the LA Clippers and other top
female executives will discuss their own challenges and
victories in breaking through to the top of their professions. The panel will share their collective insights and helpful tools on
successfully navigating obstacles and opportunities facing women and underrepresented groups. The discussion will be followed by a short Q&A with the audience.
Doors: 3pm
Reception / Refreshments
Event Time: 4pm- 5:30pm
(please be seated by 3:50pm)
reserve a spot
[email protected] • Greeks